Guide: Romanization

This guide is to be of use for correctly romanizing the JP TITLE to the EN TITLE field.The system we strive to use for all romanizations is the Hepburn system.

Kanji

If you're not fluent in japanese a translation application is needed, it is recommended that you at least have some understanding of the language to even try this. Any program that uses e-dict can successfully be used, webtranslator services are discouraged, even though some may use edict.There are several good plugins for browsers to help translate kanji.

Katakana

Since katakana is mostly used for transcribed words they can often easily be romanized and translated. Examples:

Either the romanization or translation of the word may be used.However sometimes katakana is used as onomatopoeia, emphasis, names or technical terms. Such words can and should not be translated in the EN TITLE, only a rominization of it must be entered. Examples:

Hiragana

All hiragana should be easy to romanize for the EN TITLE field.A table of all kana can be found on wikipedia: Hiragana

Forbidden characters

These characters should NOT be in the EN TITLE field:

♪ × ・ ★ ～ ∀ ♯ ☆ ○ 。

They must be replaced with SPACE or similar looking ISO character.

Abbreviations

Mostly found on magazines and if written in roman characters they can be used as is. Examples:

ABBREVIATION - WORDVOL. - VolumeNo. - Number

Dates/Numbers

Also mostly found on magazines, the kanji for year (年 - nen), month (月 - gatsu) and day (日 - ka). If all three are present with a date they can be removed to make it more conventional with / or -.However, if they are 'part' of the title and not just a numbering, a romanization should be made instead. (The above mentioned romanization would probably apply.)

Roman characters

Any title words or characters that are of the alfabet can be used as is and needs no change.